Author: brianbilston

We would like to apologise for the delay.
This is due to the wrong kind of deal,
which indeed is any kind of deal
that might make your forward journey possible
at this time.

Passengers are advised to seek
alternative countries
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We would like to apologise for the delay.
This is due to a mechanical fault
in the machinery of government.
A team of engineers is working to fix this problem.
We hope to continue on our journey
in the autumn of 2055.

Passengers are advised
that a government replacement service
will not be operating on these routes
at this time.

We would like to apologise for the delay.
This is due to leavers on the line.
A buffet car serving refreshments,
including hot and cold snacks,
will not be available.

Passengers are advised
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at all times.

We would like to apologise for the delay,
signalling failure
at this time.

It’s been lucky enough to receive some kind early reviews. Here are a few of them:

‘Nobody must find out about this unique gem, because I’m giving it to EVERYONE, and I want to appear clever and discerning. It’s a very funny/touching/novel/ poetry kinda book all about the big/little stuff, and above all, it’s eminently wrappable.’

Dawn French

‘Glorious. I will be astonished if I read a more original, more inventive or funnier novel this year.’

Adam Kay, author of ‘This is Going to Hurt’

‘The English comic novel, whose death this year was announced prematurely, is actually alive, well and in the safe hands of Brian Bilston. Here is a wonderful, laugh-out-loud comedy of suburban despair in the great tradition of David Nobbs and Sue Townsend. And it comes, of course, with the added bonus of Bilston’s poetry, sparkling here with all the wit, intelligence and humanity that has won him more than 50,000 followers on Twitter.’

Jonathan Coe, author of ‘Middle England’

‘Highly original, genuinely funny and clever, with a gentle humanity in between the lines. Brian Bilson should be Poet Laureate.’

John O’Farrell

‘In the future a new word will enter the language: a Bilston, which will denote one of those times in the day when we see the world from a perspective that is strange, wonderful and packed with a kind of gleaming joy. This book is a clock ticking with Bilstons.’

I’d buy everything from a bookshop if I could.
All my food would come from there.
Atwooden tables I would sit, eating Dahl,
Kipling Tartts or chocolate Baudelaires.
There’d be flat tortillas, focaccia and the rye:
it would be a literary-luncheoned life of pie,
all washed down with a glass of Carver
or a Swift half, if I’d rather.

I would make myself an Eco-friendly home:
go Greene and buy recycled tomes.
It Wodehouse a Self-portrait in the attic,
where no-one else could look at it,
and a looking-glass, of course, for the hall,
(amazing how I’ve not changed at all).
My house would Spark delighted looks;
I’d build a coffee table out of coffee table books.

I would also buy my clothes from there:
ragged trousers, experimental novel underwear,
dust jackets and striped pyjamas.
Boyd by the comments that I would Garner,
my days would pass quite Harper Lee,
this bookshop life, these books and me.

Like this:

I convened an academic symposium
and gathered together the great and the good
from a wide variety of disciplines
to consider the question, ‘What is love?’

The philosophers said we must first start with Plato.
The historians showed how it had changed over time.
The chemists spoke of oxytocin and dopamine.
The psychologists thought it was all in the mind.

The political scientists declared it undemocratic.
The sociologists deemed it a social construct.
The economists said that nothing else mattered
except for how little there was, or how much.

The linguists explained the word came from Old English.
The theologians claimed it came straight from God.
The media studies professors weren’t present
but they said they’d send their thoughts in a vlog.

The anthropologists spoke of love across cultures.
The mathematicians tried to work out its square root.
The neuroscientists pointed at MRI scans.
The musicologists played its song on a lute.

The art historians said it was all about perspective.
The geologists believed it from molten rock hewn.
The classicists read extracts from Sappho and Ovid.
The astrophysicists thought it to do with the moon.

The geographers tried to map all its contours.
The literature scholars quoted Auden and Keats.
At the end we were no nearer an answer;
we reconvene on Wednesday next week.